In general, streaming (or media content streaming) refers to a multimedia service wherein a subscriber (or subscribers) may receive (or simultaneously receive) and playback media content, such as music, images, video, multimedia, and so on. The media content may be sourced by a server to the subscriber(s) over a communications network.
Multiple bit rate based adaptive streaming has been widely adopted in the media content streaming industry today. Existing client-side control or server-side control bit rate adaptation strategies are customer based, e.g., adapting to available communications network bandwidth, computational capability and/or display resolution of a display device of a subscriber, or so on.
When a server's streaming capability bound or limit is reached, a denial of service to some subscribers may occur. A typical technique that may be employed when a server's streaming capability bound is reached is to reduce the quality (e.g., bit rate) of the media content being served to the subscribers without consideration being given to the impact of the bit rate reduction on media quality being served. For example, a subscriber being served media content at a high bit rate may tolerate a bit rate drop of a few hundred kilobits per second without even noticing any drop in quality, while a subscriber being served media content at a low bit rate may not be able to tolerate a bit rate drop of less than a hundred kilobits per second without incurring a significant quality drop.